Chapter 5: Lit, page 14.

Haaaaair trigger.

Thanks to everyone who came out to see me at Wondercon! I had a great time. I have another con this wekend: I’ll be at the MoCCA Festival in New York City, Sharing table C7 with Ryan Magnusson and Dave Shabet of Dead Winter! And unlike Wondercon, I WILL have book 4s. Rejoice!

Oh, dear. Oh-dear-oh-dear-oh-dear. That is not Gene. That is training..Gene’s not home right now. *sighs*

And the look on Feathers face tells me where he -got- said training. Either from her or his daddy. Too bad Marcus didn’t remember in time. If he even knew. If so, he’s even dumber than I thought he was, to push that way.

Definitely training. Gene definitely not home. I knew all Jakes are taught to fight, with knives, but this is unarmed and its instinct. They must have crazy stupid amounts of training, and begin really young, to act that way.

Makes we even more scared for Zora. They’ve already given her knives. She’s witnessed abusive behavior, and violence, and has no one to protect her. Gene won’t, and he actually accidentally hurt her last strip.

Agreed. That might be training. More likely, since this is Gene, it’s… close to whatever it was they summoned before. Or at least… throat and balls. That’s downright instinct, but not necessarily training. Don’t underestimate rage – and when 99% of his emotions are ‘laid back Gene’, that 1% has got to be… well, you’re seeing it.

I think the term you’re looking for is “conditioning” not training… Someone else noted that wouldn’t Marcus have been given the same “training”, but not necessarily — we don’t know how old Marcus is compared to Gene. But it definitely seems to me that this is a conditioned response from Gene. Feather’s lack of any particular reaction reinforces that she (and perhaps Apollo) knew this would happen because she (or they) are the ones who — for lack of a better term — ingrained this kind of behavior into Gene.

Almost better than the near expressionless look on Gene’s face in the first panel is the very disinterested look on Feather’s face in the last one. She’s seen this before, and isn’t one bit surprised. I don’t see her stepping in anytime soon to stop this.

Definitely training. Gene definitely not home. I knew all Jakes are taught to fight, with knives, but this is unarmed and its instinct. They must have crazy stupid amounts of training, and begin really young, to act that way.

Makes we even more scared for Zora. They’ve already given her knives. She’s witnessed abusive behavior, and violence, and has no one to protect her. Gene won’t, and he actually accidentally hurt her last strip.

If Gene was getting trained for this kinda stuff, wouldn’t Marcus have gotten some inkling growing up with the other Jakes, or offered that kind of training himself?

No sir, friends and neighbors, that’s not training. That is a tiger going for the jugular, not because he’s determined, but because he’s so far past giving a shit, it would take light a billion years to get from Gene to “giving a shit”. He doesn’t care.

Feather’s not surprised because SHE doesn’t give a shit.

Marcus better hope Feather can find a reason to keep him around or else he’s about to be a casualty of Gene-Therapy.

Training and reflex/instinct are not mutually exclusive. Conditioned responses don’t require conscious thought. Really, though, this kind of fighting is what I would expect from a Jake – quick, dirty, designed to incapacitate or kill the opponent in the shortest amount of time. It’s the kind of unarmed fighting real world separatist militias teach. Distract, Disable, Destroy.

If one were to assume that I am even the slightest bit correct, that *does* leave the question of why the training didn’t “stick” with Marcus. That one’s easy, and I’ve seen it in more martial arts schools and styles than I’d care to count. When a student believes they are “special” within a learning group, their work is entirely conscious. Demonstrations of skill become regurgitations of pattern. They are able to handle themselves only on a rudimentary level outside of drills. Marcus exhibits the “I’m special even though Mommy never told me so” mentality quite well, and fits the profile of that student exactly.

I’m not saying that it necessarily *is* training, but your claim that it couldn’t possibly be training kicking in is, sadly, on its face false.

I’m not saying it couldn’t be training, but I don’t see Gene having an attention span long enough to even comprehend training in anything he doesn’t want to do. But he does have brothers, and as anyone with brothers will tell you, it doesn’t take long to learn the soft spots while wrasslin’.

Damn. Straight for the balls. STRAIGHT for the balls. Not even punching him in the gut first.
I’ve only seen one person so far call this what it is, seeing red. Not about training, though training will make it more dangerous. Guys like Gene don’t bluster or threaten when the line gets crossed.
They just go cold and make things happen.
In this case, Gene is making things happen to Marcus’ balls.

Feather might be just sitting there to see if Gene’s gonna kill Marcus. Jackie will make replacements, the rest of the gang will corrupt their innocent minds with quaint survivalist morals. Also, the man’s gotta lose it some time.

Whoaly crap. The wide-eyed, somewhat blank expression is generally something I associate with someone ABOUT to snap, but this expression continues on into Gene’s actual Marcus-grabbage.
I’m looking forward to seeing what Zora does, personally. How Gene reacts to her trying to intervene could, theoretically, either save or break their close relationship as daddy/daughter. But Zora is made of awesome, so this potentially makes for good character development for her.

so if the Jakes cut their hair for “combat” reasons, why does apollo get to keep his beard? facial hair is WAY more leverage than skalp hair.
I guess the bald head is more of a gang sign – they’re proud of beeing jake-ugly.

In panel 2, one hand is still choking his chicken and the other hand just landed a palm-strike on his throat with enough force to knock him backward onto the ground. It’s extremely painful even if it doesn’t damage your larynx.

And yes, I DO see the other hand on Marcus’ chin in the previous panel, and there may well be a good amount of pressure on the throat, but I think Gene’s just holding him down, pinning the squirming little thing until it shuts the fuck up and learns its lesson about fucking with big brother’s game…

Of course, with the glazed expression, there’s not that much thought going into it.

I don’t know if I’d call Feather’s facial expression disinterest. It looks more like pure contempt to me…like she’s about to tell Marcus he dug his grave and now he needs to lie in it. Gene’s expressions are pretty freaky. I am very curious what’s happening to Zora and what’s going to happen next. Poor little girl!

It’s too bad for Marcus that he overestimated how “city” Gene had become. Even if he had remembered any training that Gene may have gone through, it seems he disregarded it because he assumed Gene had gone completely soft.

Also, Gene’s face in the last panel = eep. I always knew Gene would be scary if ticked off enough.

Gene has no iris left. Nothing but pupil. Look back about 2 strips where Marcus is ranting over his head. Nice, calm, un-involved eyeballs. Now? No iris, and his eyes are wide, staring, and deeply shadowed. I love how his flip to the dark side is so evident in such a small change of expression.

Video games didn’t make him violent, he was completely passive no matter what was done or said to him while he was playing… However, not only did Marcus cause Gene to lose but he also destroyed his controller and did who knows what damage to the system/game by throwing it around like that.

Love how the ad on the lower right of my screen from drugfree.org came up as, ‘Don’t be a Patsy”. So apropos.
Don’t assume anything about big bro, there. And learn that when your mouth writes checks, your body better be able to cash ‘em, lil Jake.

Is anyone besides me really upset that dim but relatively docile Gene has suddenly become quite ferocious? The masterful thing is that, in retrospect, it’s not that surprising. It completely fits in his character. But it still makes me really sad to see it happen.

Is anyone besides me really upset that dim but relatively docile Gene has suddenly become quite ferocious? The masterful thing is that, in retrospect, it’s not that surprising. It completely fits in his character. But it still makes me really sad to see it happen.